New technologies are certainly great teaching resources. I personally started using my laptop and video projector this year and I realised that that benfited me and my students. My work has become more interesting, easier and cleaner. Chalk and talk everyday turns your classroom into a boring place for you and your students. With the new technologies my students are more interested in attending my classes. The new technologies have made my work easier too. As an example, preparing visual aids and showing them is no more hard work. There are lots of ready made pictures on the web that you can edit and present effectively using MS Powerpoint. My work has also become cleaner. I couldn't put on my nice clothes when coming to the classroom because of the chalk I used. Now I have a white board(not yet interactive) and a laptop. The dusty days are to dust.

What about you? 

Do you think that ICT in the classroom does have some shortcomings?

Brahim ID BEN DRISS,

EFL teacher.

Safi, Morocco. 

Hi Monica,

I am now using my laptop mainly for presenting and practising language. First of all you need a video projector besides your laptop. This is usually bought by the school as in my case. Then you need a screen in place of your blackboard. A white-painted wall would do. So that's all the material (hardware) you need.

In the past I used to spend lots of time looking for visual aids to use in my lessons. I usually cut pictures from magazines or printed them from the internet. Now I use google to look for pictures, edit them and save them to my computer. I also used to have hand-written lesson plans. I now type them on my computer, consult them before or during the lesson and then print a copy if needed.

 As to the lesson I use powerpoint to present it. Powerpoint is a Microsoft presentation software(program) that can be used to display text and images and play sound and video. A powerpoint presenation is composed of slides tha are displayed one after the other. Within a slide you can decide the order in which the components(text, image...) would be displayed.  

I usually start my lesson with presenting new language items using pictures or videos. Then I move on to a practice stage. The practice stage is usually a listening activity or reading activity. During a listening or reading activity the students listen to or read a text or dialogue and do some exercises. the questions are displayed using powerpoint  and the students come and use my laptop keyboard or another keyboard connected to my laptop and answer the questions. What the student write is displayed on the screen. I no more use a blackboard.

I can share some of my presentations with you. Could tell about your context(school, students level and age....)?

Brahim ID BEN DRISS

EFL teacher.

Safi, Morocco

That is true with the internet, we  have gained an entry to  limitless storage of videos, music, slides related to English teaching. But that Web 2.0 technology is very beneficial for providing collaboration between people.

If there is something more valuable than gold, it is sharing.

Regards,

Ufuk